


A Poor Synonym

by SkadizzleRoss



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel & Vessel Interactions, Angst, Gen, POV Castiel, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1907805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violent deaths don’t have to haunt places. They can haunt people, too – and angels. Castiel acclimates to an empty vessel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Poor Synonym

**Notes/Prompt(s):** Entry for the 2010 deancastiel Renegade Angels prompt exchange, written for luchia13. You’ve got to tilt your head just so to see it, but the prompt is: “Know how Jimmy exploded in what is undeniably a violent death? He's haunting Chuck's house. Castiel and the Winchesters have a very angsty, requiring hurt-comfort type of case on their hands.”

 

“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”  
\-- _‘Salem’s Lot_ by Stephen King

 

 

 

Here.

The prophet sank back on his heels, here, as a thousand fractures spread fingers wide across the glass of his window; here, Raphael, full of wrath, pressed a palm to the juncture of skull and neck and spoke, “ _Castiel_.” There was surprise there, wrath, cold, and an eternity’s exhaustion.  


\-------||-------

  
His first words to Jimmy Novak were, _You are chosen._

True consent. A meeting of Fate and Grace.

At his back – through several inches of iron – Sam Winchester takes a shuddering breath and releases it as a scream.

 

Jimmy Novak said yes. He also did far more than that.

Castiel was curious, always, and Jimmy was obliging, always, a bottomless resource. All the colloquialisms: cellular phones, SUVs, telenovellas. The taste of coffee, liquor, sirloin. Feelings: boredom. Stress. Impatience.

He also told Castiel of doubt.

 

There are memories, but there are no words, after his (their) death.

Famine is a macabre hope: hunger is some sign of Jimmy’s existence, where the cold amulet against his throat has yet to be.

But in the absence of that insatiable need, there is nothing. Only more silence. Castiel’s calls go unheard, a small, disconsolate voice that he imagines – perhaps fancifully – echoes within the confines of this borrowed form.

_Jimmy? …Jimmy?_

He does not want to search for Jimmy, as well. He does not need to know of something else lost.

 

Jimmy spoke in confidences:

Of his wife in the morning sunlight, smiling wide beneath bed-mussed hair.

Of his daughter, blue eyes only a shade darker than his own, and her love of strawberries.

 

 

He knows Claire: young, her hair in curls, and the feel of her palm – soft – against her father’s. (Conversely, his palm – rough – against hers.) And Jimmy begged “Take me,” _please not her._

 

 

In return, Castiel confided:

He said, _If I were to speak of this--,_ and Jimmy answered, _If you think it’s right._

Castiel asked, _I?_

_Yeah, Castiel. You. Do you?_

 

 

He rests in the Impala. He will not call it sleep, and he will not tell them that he requires it. But the backseat that is more-or-less allocated to him, and Sam is, although not well, mobile.

When he rises, there is a feather in the foot well, gray, tired essence etched with a simple filigree of light. He is seized with the urge to snatch it up, but he leaves it. It can be a talisman, of sorts, however briefly. Separated from him it will dim and disappear.

 

 

It was Sabachiel that tore him from his vessel, the first time, and for a fleeting moment, it was a relief: freedom from the prison of organs, tissue, cells, molecules, atoms. And then, then it was—

 

 

He’s travelled far since Sioux Falls, farther than he has in weeks, spread his wings wide over the endless expanse of oceans. There is nothing to be found. He’s chased the sun and the moon both, stood on rock with history stretching back farther than the human mind can imagine – places ancient, weathered with thousands of years of sun — and places just born, rising bare and black from the ocean floor. And there is divinity about it all, he can see and feel the undercurrent of it, but His Father himself is never there. He is never anywhere.

Castiel flies until his knees strike rock: the Pamirs, the Roof of the World. He presses a palm against the cold bite of snow, then his forehead. Then he stretches limbs loose with exhaustion across the uneven surface and turns his face towards the stars and black overhead.

He is alone.

 

 

On earth, a human cried: “—‘s your _Heaven?_ ”

 _You made promises to them, brother,_ Zachariah announced as they watched. _You are of no rank to make promises. There are consequences, try as we may to protect you from them._

A human pleaded, and Castiel bided in agreeable silence.

“Typical,” Jimmy hissed, and threw himself towards the building with desperate anger in his heart.

Hesitantly, _May I—_

 _Yes, of course,_ Zachariah answered, all graciousness, all compassion, kindness, and let loose his bruising hold. _Go save your humans, Castiel._

 

 

 _Do you?_ Jimmy asked again, when they stood in the absence of space and time, just beyond the dimension of Dean Winchester’s gilded prison.

 _This isn’t right. This isn’t Right,_ he reiterated, and reveled over the strange color his grace was taking: tight whorls of yellow that resonated in the raw edges of Jimmy’s nerves.

_Is he worth it? Winchester?_

His answer was immediate: _Yes._

 

 

“Gentleman Jack,” Dean says. Castiel knows there have been seventeen prior to this – there are seventeen glasses set upon the scarred countertop – but he can only repeat the last fourteen names, and that is a worry. Dean’s voice is slurring into warm, smooth syllables. “And after this Jim Beam. Not my personal favorite, but man, Sammy—Sammy on this stuff is _great._ ”

He drinks it fast, flavor long since a commodity.

It’s for no particular purpose (and that, alone, is a pleasurable enough thought) that he says, “I’m— I’m searching for—“

“Cas, you say God, I will clock you, swear to that—elusive motherfucker.”

“No. No,” Castiel answers. He’s suddenly miserable and feverish in this claustrophobic place.

“What, then?” Dean asks. Despite the prior threat, he sounds perfectly agreeable.

Castiel struggles for a proper answer for a tremendously long time (minutes are years, somewhere). Dean is already handing him another drink. “Whatever, Cas.”

 

 

 

 

 _\--grieves,_ Jimmy had said. A tightening of the muscles of the throat, breaths drawn short and harried, and shoulders usually high brought low. _This is grieving._

 _I have grieved,_ Castiel had returned with uncharacteristic anger, because he did not want to know that was what this qualified as, did not want to know this was his visceral response to the death of a betrayer. Uriel. Uriel did not deserve grieving, although there would be grieving; in Heaven, his brothers would grieve, the proper way, and he—he was there, on Earth, trapped, unable. He wanted home. He wanted order. He was _confined._

And Jimmy had pressed a thin smile of his own and said, _That’s grieving, too._

 

 

 

 

It’s a land they call White Earth, Tierra Bianca, and he has no notion of its strategic importance, only that it is falling.

A demon sets its claws into the apex of his brother’s wing, and works to tear it free entirely. Ligaments shred, bleed grace and light – with a twist his brother drives the last of his spears through its throat, pinning its withering essence to the ground. Three of the demon’s fellows move to finish its work.

He wants to reach out a hand. He wants to drag him free, but he is dying with a prayer on his lips, and Castiel cannot save him. He flees the place, but there is nowhere on this finite place that he wants to go, and he does not know where the Winchesters are. He has to land in the fallow fields of Oklahoma and Dean’s voice is slurred with sleep, rather than alcohol, when it answers. “Cas, man, c’mon. You were getting alright at the not-calling-at-two-am thing.”

“I apologize. I’ll—call later.”

“Nah—wait. You’re not in trouble or anything, are you?”

“No.”

“Columbus, Ohio. Red Rabbit Inn, room 12.There’s pizza in the fridge.” Dean’s voice is drifting back towards sleep; the call ends.

Even with that information, he doesn’t go. He’s not entirely sure why he called in the first place. The weeds and broken wheat stalks are deathly still beneath his feet. His lingering thought is not of the violence that he saw, but of the fact that his brother will be mourned.

 

When he rescued Dean Winchester from Zachariah in the fall, Zachariah spoke to him in passing. Only one word, while Castiel’s hand closed on Dean Winchester’s shoulder: “ _Brother._ ” It is spoken in cold, condescending tones, not the way it should; it’s a promise of what he will never have again.

 

 

He fears.

That his father has Dean Winchester’s sense of humor: meaningless words framed in a smile, frustratingly foreign, purposeless and idiomatic. That somewhere He is observing Castiel’s confusion and despair, and He is laughing.

That one day soon, there will be a place on the once small, now large surface of this world too far – that an ocean will be too broad to cross.

That he will be drawn closer and closer to the earth until, at last, he is as resolutely bound to the confines of gravity as any mortal man.

That he will be human.

That he will never find any of what he seeks.

That he is incapable of finding any of what he seeks.

 

His vessel – the man who gave himself wholly to him – said “Take me” and meant _not her,_ “Take me, please,” _please, not her._ “Castiel, you son of a bitch!”

 

 

“Cas?”

He is breathing fast, and sitting very, very still. He has, as Dean would put it, gotten knocked on his ass, good. (Well). Sam is kneeling, staring at him with wide eyes. “Cas, are you—shit, did that hurt?”

“Is it dead?” he asks. He speaks through teeth clenched tightly together. It seems to ease – this. Burning, frigid mess of nerve pathways alit – fast cold and slow heat, building together—

 _Pain. This is pain,_ Jimmy would say, but doesn’t.

Sam puts out a questing hand, then withdraws it, hesitant. “Well, yeah—“

He goes, before Sam can summon the sense to hold him down.

 

 

 

 

_Not her. Please, not her._

_Please, God, not her._

There were never any words, after his death.

 

 

 

 

He stands upon the concrete of the sidewalk for many minutes, dripping Iowa rain and Jimmy Novak’s blood across the pavement. (Knocked on his ass well. (Good.))

Jimmy’s first words to him, when he was a passenger within his own body, chained to Castiel’s clumsy and ill-fitting grace, were _my ring._

_Wedding ring._

With that thought were fears, _lost,_ and concerns, _not-self,_ and memories, _fatherhusbandself._ Castiel did not grasp them fully, but he was obliging enough to pull the gold band free. He put it into the inner pocket of Jimmy Novak’s suit, and did not think of it again.

It isn’t there, now.

The memory of it is there but the ring isn’t. (Lost.)

He disengages the lock with a small twist of his grace, and stands dripping within the front hall. It smells of _home,_ but not his own, and it is many weeks empty. (Akron. Parents, Amelia’s. Eugene (Grandpapa, Sir) and Caroline (Nana, Ma’am).) There is a table which he knows the feel of, smooth against his knuckles, stairwell (third fourth sixth step creak), and Claire’s bedroom. Once it was a nursery, but now it is a bedroom, with proper bedroom things: a bed, caricatures of flowers drawn across it, stuffed animals, the bear from her 2nd birthday. There was peace, in Jimmy, here. There was calm, there was _this_ , husband, and father, and love, an overbearing sense of all that it is beyond Castiel’s making to perceive.

And then there was sorrow; grief ( _not her_ ); pain; Fate and Grace met and Castiel, Castiel made promises that he was of no authority to make.

 _Please, God, not her_ (take me).  


\-------||-------

  
Here.

It is precisely where he landed – where he stood shoulder to shoulder with the prophet and cried, “I’ll hold them off! I’ll hold them all off!”

There is a computer, new.

A new window. A new desk. The floor is spotless, the wallpaper stripped.

There is no ring.

There are no words.

 

 

 _Do you?_ Jimmy asked one final time.

 _Yes._ He feared. He spoke it again: _Yes._

Raphael’s grace was cool against his skin

“ _Castiel,_ ” (spoken properly, in their tongue)

a staying hand against the back of his neck. The breadth and span of a thunderstorm, Raphael pressed close.

The prophet cowered.

To Jimmy, Castiel offered an apology.

To Dean, he said, _Fly far_.

Raphael tore him asunder.

 

 

Castiel knew oblivion.

 

\-------||-------

He lands--- he doesn’t know where, but it isn’t far. He is too tired to move far.

“Cas?”

It startles him, the phone in his hand. He hadn’t consciously opened it, or dialed it – but it is open, and again Dean’s voice: “Cas? Are you dead?”

Talking, Sam Winchester once informed him, is more polite than not. So he clears his voice long enough to say, “Where are you?”

“Three-Star Motor Inn. Room 301. Just outside of Des Moines. Y’know, that town where we were _hunting_ when you up and took off—“

He considers the speaker – still issuing its hum of electronic voice, getting more trill the farther he pulls it from his face. He knows the place. (He knows most places. Small, and smaller…) But it is far, and—and Dean Winchester has hung up on him. _Call Ended,_ the screen says.

He returns the phone to his pocket. He has no intention of moving. It is very, very far and he is—

(Miserable. Lonely.)

He fixates on that.

Lonely.

Alone. Lonely, and alone.

Jimmy didn’t tell him of guilt, pain. Loneliness.

He wishes for home, and ignorance – Uriel’s hand upon his shoulder (Raphael’s, against his neck, cold as iron) – brotherhood that he no longer has, and will never have again. He is despairing. (Falling.) He has lost his vessel – his vessel is dead. His vessel is dead, his Father is missing, he is bruised and tired and falling in slow, drifting spirals to the burning earth.

_This is loneliness, Castiel._

Alone.

 

 

 

 

_Father. You brought me back alone._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His phone is ringing: the slow build of violins, cellos, colloquially _strings_ although there is far more to such an instrument than that.

It’s an _adagio_ , Sam said, when he set the tone. ‘That other ringtone sounded like something out of the Shining—no offense,’ he’d said.

“Dude,” the voice on the other line says. It’s Dean. “Where the hell are you? Did you stop for a manicure? The food’s getting cold.”

Sam says something in the background, and there’s a rustle as Dean covers the receiver with his palm to shout something obscene.

 

 

He lets the phone slip shut.

Des Moines, in retrospect, isn’t that far.

_Finis._


End file.
